Summary of Investigator Development Core The RCMI Cancer Research Center at Xavier University will establish an Investigator Development Core (IDC) that will focus on enhancing the health disparities and biomedical research capacity of early career faculty. The IDC will achieve this goal by providing pilot projects and as well as early career/research development activities including the matching of investigators with collaborators and mentors. These activities may start before new faculty begin their responsibilities at Xavier, will continue throughout pilot project research and then continue as investigators move forward to become research competitive. To accomplish these goals, the IDC will achieve the following two specific aims: Aim 1. To coordinate and implement training and mentoring activities focused on increasing the research competitiveness of early stage investigators, mid-career faculty and research scientists. Multiple activities will link early stage investigators, mid-career faculty and research scientists to the resources of the Xavier RCMI program as well as other program resources at Xavier with the goal of building collaborative research programs that will be competitive for achieving external funding. A focus will be made to develop minority faculty. Accomplishment of this aim will result in more early stage investigators at Xavier participating in mentored collaborations involving established researchers, more high- quality publications, more competitive applications for external grant funding and ultimately more research awards, particularly those addressing health disparities issues. Aim 2. To establish a pilot project program focused on early career investigators working in collaboration with an established mentor and/or collaborator to develop research capacity and competitiveness by generating preliminary data for subsequent external grant applications. The goal of this program is to support early stage investigators at Xavier to generate preliminary data for submission of grant applications, particularly those that focus on research related to diseases that disproportionately impact minority or other disparity populations, or that address health disparities. Involvement of minority faculty will be emphasized and encouraged. This program will involve competitive pilot funding for up to three years of support and include mentors/collaborators as active participants in the pilot research as well as the resulting publications and external grant applications. The accomplishment of this aim will result in more early stage Xavier faculty obtaining high quality and significant preliminary data that will be incorporated into competitive external grant applications.